in which Rameses and Khattusil undertook never to invade each other's territory. From this Treaty1 it is clear that 15 years of almost constant fighting had in no way benefited either the Egyptians or the Hittites, and the former had to abandon finally all hope of regaining the countries in Western Asia which Thothmes III had conquered and of further tribute from Syria. Thirteen years later Rameses married a daughter of the Prince of Kheta, and she appears in a relief at Abu Simbel under the name of Urmaāneferurā. In the years following his wars Rameses devoted himself to repairing the temples of Egypt, and in every building he touched he took care that his name should occupy a prominent position. He "usurped" the monuments in a shameless fashion, and as a result of his restorations the names of the founders in many cases disappear entirely. His greatest work is the famous rock-hewn temple, 185 feet long, at Abu Simbel, in Nubia, in which he was worshipped as a god. In front of this he set up four colossal granite statues of himself, each about 60 feet in height; close by it he built the temple of Hathor, with six statues, four of himself and two of his wife Nefertari-mertenmut. He made Tanis his capital and lived there. He practically rebuilt that city, and the gods Sutekh and Bār (Baal) and other Syrian and Hittite gods were worshipped in its temples. The Stele of 400 years suggests that the city was founded by Nubti, a Hyksos king. Rameses built at Thebes the Ramesseum, which Diodorus calls the "Tomb of Osymandyas,” and Strabo the " Memnonium,"2 and completed the Hall of Columns, and made additions to the Temple of Luxor, in front of which he set up several statues of himself and two granite obelisks, each about 80 feet high. According to Exodus i, 11, he built the city of Pithom, the ruins of which are now called Tall al-Maskhuṭah, in the Eastern Delta. Rameses appears to have been an arrogant, self-assertive and vain man, full of brute courage in his early manhood, and obstinate and determined. His charging the Hittites almost singlehanded at the Battle of Kadesh was a splendid exploit, but he does not appear to have been a good tactician or a good soldier or statesman. He added no territory to Egypt, and during his long reign his country steadily declined. His mummy was found at Dêr alBaḥarî and was unrolled by Maspero on June 1st, 1886. Merenptaḥ (Menephthah), the Ammenephthes of Manetho, was the son of Rameses II by Queen Astnefert; he was co-regent with his father for several years, and was no longer a young man when he ascended the throne. During the first four years of his 1 It was drawn up in Egyptian and Hittite, and the Hittite version, judging from the tablets found at Boghaz Kyöi, was written in cuneiform. The Egyptian text has been edited and skilfully handled by Müller in Mittheil. Vorderas. Ges., Bd. V, No. 5, and both the Egyptian and cuneiform texts are discussed by Gardiner and Langdon in Jnl. Eg. Arch., Vol. VI, p. 179 ff. 2 The colossal but very ugly statue of himself which he set up there was 60 feet high, and weighed at least 885 tons. E reign the Libyans seized some of the Oases and other Egyptian territories and became so bold that they invaded the suburbs of Memphis and Heliopolis. They were assisted by several Mediterranean peoples,1 and even Europeans from the mainland, and their object was to occupy the Delta permanently. In the fifth year of his reign Merenptaḥ fortified his cities and collected a great army and set out to do battle with the Libyans and their allies. The armies met at Perår-t, a place probably near the Wâdî Naṭrûn, and the Libyan host was led by Maraiui, , the son of Țeț, king of Libya. Cheered by 동 a dream in which Ptaḥ gave him a sword, and a consciousness of the good-will of Amen of Thebes and of Set, the god of the Delta, Merenptaḥ attacked the enemy boldly, and according to the Egyptian chronicler fearful carnage ensued. The battle raged for six hours and the Egyptians slew the enemy by thousands. The king of Libya fled, casting away his arms and sandals and garments as he went, and his camp fell into the hands of the king of Egypt. Over 6,000 Libyans were slain and their bodies mutilated, 9,376 were made prisoners, and among the spoil were 9,111 swords, 126 horses, 120,314 weapons of various kinds, etc. The battle was decisive and the Egyptian victory complete. Merenptaḥ had crushed the rebellion that broke out in Palestine soon after the death of Rameses II and, having overcome all his foes, he determined to set up a stele to commemorate his conquests. He took the large stele which Amenhetep III had set up in his temple in Western Thebes, and on its back he had engraved the text which is now generally known as the "Hymn of Victory," and which is a useful supplement to his historical inscriptions at Karnak. He had this stele taken to his funerary temple, where it was found by Petrie in 1896.2 Special interest was aroused in the text because the Israelites, are mentioned for the first time in 99 an Egyptian inscription, and the monument has therefore been called the Israel Stele. Merenptaḥ says in it that the princes [everywhere] grovel before him and do homage to him, that the Nine Nations of the Bow (Nubians) are crushed, Libya is laid waste, Kheta has been pacified, Canaan is brought to misery, Ascalon and Gezer have been captured, Inuama has been annihilated, the Israelites 1 The identifications first made by de Rougé have been amplified and discussed by H. R. Hall in his Oldest Civilization of Greece, p. 173, and in the Annual of the British School at Athens, Vol. VIII, p. 173, and in his Ancient History, p. 377. His latest views on the Peoples of the Sea will be found in the Memorial Volumes of Champollion and Ramsay. 2 For the text see Spiegelberg, Aeg. Zeit., Bd. XXXIV, p. 1 ff., and his subsequent edition of it in Petrie, Six Temples, pll. 13 and 14. Valuable notes on it were given by Müller in Maspero's Recueil, Vol. XX, p. 31 ff. are wasted and have no seed, and Khal (Palestine) has become the widow of Egypt. The mention of the Israelites in Merenptaḥ's Hymn of Victory has a bearing on one of the theories about the Exodus which has been widely held. According to it the Exodus took place in the reign of Merenptaḥ (Rameses II being regarded as the "Pharaoh of the oppression ") and he was the king who was said to have been drowned in the Sea of Reeds, DD, which early Christian tradition identified with the Red Sea. But if the Israelites were settled in Palestine and were conquered by Merenptaḥ, it is quite clear that they cannot have left Egypt during his reign and arrived in Palestine after 40 years' wandering in the desert. Though there are many points in favour of the view that the Exodus took place in Merenptaḥ's reign, the evidence concerning an earlier occupation of Palestine by the Hebrews, which is supplied chiefly by the Tall al-'Amârnah tablets, shows that it must be abandoned. And it also makes it nearly certain that the Khabiru and the Sa-Gaz peoples, who laid Canaan waste in the reign of Amenḥetep and took possession of the country, were the Hebrews and the mixed desert tribes who joined them. There must have been some incident in the history of the house of Jacob which gave rise to the story of the Exodus as we have it in the Bible, but exactly what it was no man can say. The narrative in the Book of Exodus was written long after the event by one who only knew of it by hearsay or tradition and who was ignorant of the geography of the Isthmus of Suez. The character of his story is stamped once and for all by his statement that there went out 600,000 on foot that were men, beside children. And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks and herds, even very much cattle" (Exodus xii, 37, 38). Josephus seems to have regarded the expulsion of the Hyksos as the Exodus of the Bible, but this was probably due to racial vanity and his desire to prove that the ancestors of his nation were at one time kings of Egypt. The fact seems to be that the original story of the Exodus, whatever it was, has been so mishandled by editors and scribes that it is no longer recognizable, but the local colour that still survives convinces me that an Exodus of some kind did actually take place. The account of the Route of the Exodus in the Book of Exodus is as difficult to understand as the story of 1 Here there is a play on the word for "widow" and the name of the country. 2 His mummy was found at Dêr al-Baharî and is now in the Museum in Cairo. Those who believed that he was drowned declared that his body was recovered from the sea, and that it bore on it physical indications that he had been drowned. 3 The various theories about the time of the Exodus have been discussed and analysed by Peet, Egypt and the Old Testament, London, 1922, and the pros and cons are set forth clearly by Hall, Ancient History, p. 404 ff. It is possible that a number of Semites fled from Egypt on the death of Rameses II, and that their flight was regarded as an exodus by later Jewish writers. the Exodus itself, and has been the subject of much controversy, for the writer was ignorant of the geography of the Isthmus of Suez and the Peninsula of Sinai and of the physical conditions of the neighbouring country generally. The literature on the subject is considerable, but the two principal theories about the route of the Israelites after leaving Egypt are well set forth by Naville (Jnl. of Eg. Arch., Vol. X, 1924, p. 11) and Peet (Egypt and the Old Testament, London, 1922). On the death of Merenptaḥ a period of anarchy began. The first king who succeeded him was Amenmeses, a man of the people, who had neither right nor claim to the throne. The length of his reign is unknown. He was succeeded by Seti II Merenptaḥ and Saptaḥ Merenptaḥ,1 but the order of the reigns of these two kings is doubtful. It is probable that Seti II followed Saptaḥ Merenptaḥ. Saptaḥ married Ta-Usrit, who is probably the Thuôris of Manetho, and if this be so this Queen must in later times have been regarded as a woman of outstanding ability. Saptaḥ reigned at least six years, during which the Nubian tribute was duly paid. His funerary temple and that of his queen were excavated by Petrie in 1896. The mummy of the king was found in the tomb of Amenḥetep II. The queen's tomb was usurped by Seti II. The last king of the dynasty was Seti III Merenptaḥ, who had been appointed "Prince of Kash" by Saptaḥ, but his reign was short, and however capable he may have been as a ruler of "naked Blacks" he failed to benefit Egypt during his reign. He had no legal successor, and when he died the great nobles fell to quarrelling among themselves, and as each did what he pleased, there being no central authority to control them, the country fell into a state of confusion almost unparalleled. A certain Syrian official in Egypt watched his opportunity and, having made himself Dictator, ruled the Egyptians in a cruelly despotic fashion. Rameses III, in describing the condition of the country before he came to the throne, calls this man Årsu, a Syrian,"2 I, but whether Arsu is a proper name, or an abusive epithet, or two words meaning that the Syrian “made himself," as Spiegelberg thinks, is not decided. The Syrian was overthrown by Setnekht, who appears to have been a kinsman of Rameses II; he ascended the throne and reigned for about one year. On his death he was succeeded by his son Rameses III. The Twentieth Dynasty. 3 Rameses III, the Rhampsinitos of Herodotus, the son of Setnekht, reigned 31 years. In the early years of his reign a great confederation of peoples from Philistia, Cyprus, Crete and the 1 In the inscriptions at Wâdî Ḥalfah he is called RAMESSU SaptaḤ. * See Wiedemann, Herodots Zweites Buch, Leipzig, 1890, p. 445. northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea attacked Egypt by land and by sea, but Rameses fought them on land with his army, and on sea with his ships, and gained a great victory. About 12,000 of their dead warriors were mutilated, and a great number of prisoners and spoil were taken. Fired by his success, Rameses led his army into Phoenicia and Syria, and was vain enough to try to repeat the exploits of Thothmes and to try to regain Egypt's lost possessions in those countries, but the expedition was a failure in spite of the spoil which he brought back to Egypt. Soon after his return the Libyans again attacked Egypt, but Rameses defeated them and slew about 2,175 of them. Among the spoil were 1,205 men and their commander and five officers, swords of extraordinary length, bows, quivers, chariots and horses and asses, and much cattle. A little later he marched against the tribes who lived in and about Mount Seir and had revolted, and reduced them to subjection. The remaining years of his reign he spent in developing the commerce of his country, and Egypt gained more from trade during his reign than she could have obtained by conquest. Rameses maintained two fleets, one in the Red Sea and one in the Mediterranean Sea, and thus was able to protect native mercantile shipping in both seas. To assist the caravans travelling to and from Syria he built a great reservoir and sank a well at Aina, and enclosed it with strong walls. He developed the copper and malachite mines of Sinai, he encouraged the trade between Egypt and the East viâ the canal from Memphis and the Red Sea, and his ships sailed freely to the Somali Coast and Punt and the ports of Arabia that were frequented by ships from the Far East. His wealth made it easy for him to treat his subjects generously, and as there was no brigandage in the country it was possible "for an Egyptian woman to walk fearlessly whithersoever she pleased, for neither man nor woman among the people would molest her (Harris Papyrus, pl. 78, 11. 9-12). His benefactions to the great priesthoods were magnificent in character, and to the temples of Thebes, Heliopolis and Memphis, he gave, among other things, 113,433 men, 490,386 oxen, 1,071,780 aruras of land, 514 vineyards and orchards, 88 boats, 160 towns in Egypt and 9 in Palestine, 324,750 bundles of fodder, 71,000 bundles of flax, 426,965 water-fowl, 2,382,650 sacks of fruit, 353,919 fat geese, 5,279,552 bushels of corn, 6,272,431 loaves of bread. He built the so-called "Pavilion" and the great temple of Madînat Habû at Thebes; a beautiful little palace in the old Hyksos town of Tall al-Yahûdîyah in the Delta, and a splendid tomb in Western Thebes, commonly known as Bruce's Tomb and the Tomb of the Harper. For the conspiracy to dethrone him see Devéria, Le Papyrus Judiciaire, Paris, 1868. Rameses III was followed by a series of 9 kings, each of whom bore the name of Rameses. Rameses IV was co-regent with his father for 4 years. He built a road from the Nile to the Red Sea, and among the 8,368 workmen and others were 800 |